Sunday, November 8, 2015

Siedah Garrett

As the purging from the record collection continued this afternoon, I came across this single by multi-talented singer-songwriter Siedah Garrett. It's the theme from BABY BOOM, a 1987 Diane Keaton vehicle in which she plays a successful, tough-as-nails New York City businesswoman who is suddenly thrust into the role of motherhood when an excruciating toddler is plopped into her lap by the wacky hands of fate. "Everchanging Times" is so incredibly and mind-bogglingly unremarkable that it's fascinating. I haven't heard a movie theme as lifeless and completely without personality or pizzazz since this tranquilizer was released back in 1983. If "Everchanging Times" had even an ounce of the zip displayed by the acid-washed, braided and bejeweled ensemble Ms. Garrett threw together for the picture sleeve photo, this single wouldn't be atop my vinyl 'discard' pile today.

Siedah Garrett has worked with the likes of Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Madonna, The Pointer Sisters and Jennifer Hudson; she's helped write hits like "Man In the Mirror" and "Love You I Do" and has labored in the music business for nearly 40 years. You can read lots more about her here. She certainly deserves a better theme song to showcase her musical talents. Hell, even Diane Keaton deserves a better theme song than this. The neverchanging blandness of "Everchanging Times" helped catapult it onto the Adult Contemporary singles chart (contemporary adults have notoriously awful taste in music, but even they could only drag it up to #30); the song failed to appear on singles charts of any other sort. How this record ended up in my collection I'd like to know. I'm pretty sure it was sabotage.